Thursday Thoughts

Looking back, looking forward

I spent some time today with the Annual Report. Ours. Emmanuel's. You'll have a chance to see it Sunday morning at the Annual Meeting and then later in the week on the website. As I was reading it today, I was struck by a couple of things. One is the quality and quantity of ministry, the work of God's people, that happens in, through and out of Emmanuel. It's astounding really how much this congregation makes happen. But perhaps even more important than the amount of projects and groups and people impacted by our work, is the love of God and of fellow human beings that is expressed in the doing of it. In so many of the reports, I could almost hear the voices of the writer, usually the ministry leader, and I pictured them and the people they work with. I could see the St. Anne's Guild making our Sunday bread, the Social Action Commission discerning where Emmanuel's offerings of time and money should be directed to care for "the least of these, my brothers and sisters," the vestry sitting in our period of silence at the beginning of our meetings. Just insert the ministry group and there is something about them (you) that comes to mind that makes me grateful to know you and to serve God with you.

At the meeting we will hear about what's going well and we'll be talk about concerns us. You'll have a chance to read the Mutual Ministry Review, which a sub-committee of the Vestry worked so faithfully to discern. It will be a road map for the vestry and me to set goals for the coming year. I'm grateful to the people who discerned with such care and concern for me and for Emmanuel. We'll also have a chance to weigh in about our newest ministry project--the Tribes. An instant "taking of the temperature" of the congregation and a project of our Congregational Development group. (You'll hear more about that as well.)

Please plan to be at the meeting on Sunday at 9. And if you didn't go to church at 8, plan to celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany as our children offer the dramatic reflection on the Gospel at 10:30. 

Following that yonder star,
Hunt+

A Joyful Christmas

More of a thank you note than a blog post, my friends. It's been an incredibly busy couple of weeks at Emmanuel--the bishop's visit on the 20th, our children's choir singing the anthem, confirmations (Matt Sims and Haley Robinson), receptions (Dick and Joyce Hedges), blessings of marriages both new (Arienne and Doug) and seasoned for 60 years (Bob and Andi Lewis). It was a fantastic day all around, with more than 240 people turning out for church that morning. Bishop Rickel posts his sermons as audio files. Since he preached two different sermons that day, you might want to listen to one or both. 

And then, in the next instant, it was Christmas Eve. A glorious day and evening, with the church and her people looking beautiful! 375 people came through our doors on the 24th and about 15 people came together for Eucharist on Christmas morning. I hope you were in that number.

For the second year in a row, we welcomed families with exceptional needs children into a specially-tailored, highly participatory Eucharist. The children and their families were a Christmas blessing to all who gathered.  The hymn sing at 4:30 that preceded our Family Eucharist was fun and informal and the church was chocked-full of kids and their families.  The choir's offering of carols and anthems later in the evening and the families with older children and longtime Emmanuelites who gathered for the midnight Mass made that Christmas Eve liturgy truly special.

It takes dozens of people--staff, altar guild, flower guild, musicians, nursery providers, ushers, Eucharistic ministers, lectors, plus all the people of God, to create liturgies as meaningful as ours were these past couple of weeks. Thank you for all you do to make Emmanuel a community of welcome, worship, witnessing and service.

We are going into 2010 in good financial shape, thanks to the generosity of so many of you and the good stewardship of our vestry. Our solid fiscal condition puts us in such a good place to deepen and broaden ministry in the name of Christ. Please plan to be at our annual meeting on January 10 at 9am sharp. We'll review the past year and look forward together, for what's possible in the coming year.

Blessings on you and those you love,
Hunt+

What then should we do?

That was John the Baptist's question for the crowd that had gathered around him. He called them a "brood of vipers" and yet they stayed to hear what we had to say. that must have been one charismatic guy!

This part of Luke's gospel was our Gospel lesson this past Sunday and the crowd's question has been with me all week. Here's the lesson.

Perhaps you've asked the same thing. After the death of a spouse or a parent? After a tragedy in your own life? When you've reached a fork in the road or gotten to the dead end of another? John's response is one I try to take when I am at one of those tough spots.

He answers the crowd by telling them to share what they have. I would do a little creative translating and add to that: to reach out to others. To move beyond our own needs, from beyond our despair and to reach out. To lend a hand. To check in someone without expectation of getting anything in return.  To find a way to respect and honor those we might not ever think deserve it. John says tax collectors and soldiers who extort from people. You can add your own outcasts to the list.

This can be a season of despair for some. I hope it isn't for you, but if it is, reach out to others. Talk to someone you're close to, be honest. It's okay to not be okay. And if you don't have someone to talk to about it, call Beverly or me. We can help find, and even help pay for, an appropriate counselor. You're not alone.

Blessings. And see you in church this Sunday and Christmas Eve. And Christmas Day.

Hunt+

 

Sabbath, Rest, Hopeful Expectation

It's a December tradition, isn't it? A newsletter article or sermon from the priest or pastor about the real meaning of Advent and Christmas. The reminder that it's not about shopping or parties or the feeling that if you're not having fun, something is wrong with you. We clergy types also like to remind people to find space to pray, to listen and wait for God, for the still and quiet voice.

And you know what? That's really hard to do. That finding time part. I know it's hard because I don't always take my own advice. But it must be done for our own spiritual health and wellbeing.

When I hit "send" on this, I'll be gathering a book, and a small suitcase and my running shoes. I'll get in the car and I'll drive down to The Spirituality Center at St. Placid Priory in Lacey for an 18 hour silent retreat. I'll break the silence for an hour-long spiritual direction appointment, but otherwise quiet and reading and rest.  And it will be a gift. It will be just what the doctor ordered.

Consider, please, taking some time for yourself and for God before December 24 or during the 12 Days of Christmas. Or both; that's even better. (End of sermon, now I'm going to live it!)

Blessings on your time,
Hunt+

Orient, Disorient, Reorient

I write this on a flight between Chicago and Seattle, returning from 3 days in the hill country of central Texas. The flight is the final leg of my summer pilgrimage to Israel and Palestine as each of us agreed to attend a 3-day retreat 3 months after we returned home. (Going on an expense paid trip to the Texas Hill Country in November is an easy thing to agree to, by the way, and I’m grateful to the staff, vestry and members of the parish who make it possible for me to be away to my family for putting me on yet another airplane without them.) So, although I returned home from my Pilgrimage to the Holy Lands in mid-August, it officially ended this week in Texas.

The generous and deeply spiritual people who planned our journey set the experience up around a simple and effective model: orient, disorient, reorient. The “orient”ation occurred the three days prior to our overseas flight. We gathered at a conference center in northern Virginia, received the details of our itinerary, shared reflections on the book we read in advance, learned about travel in the Middle East and began to hear each other’s stories, thereby beginning to orient to each other.

 

The “disorient”ation, at least for me, began the minute we were corralled in the uber-secure gate area of the Tel Aviv flight in the Frankfurt airport. I have flown through Frankfurt several times, yet I have never been through a preflight security screen like that. Another bag scan, questions from the guards about the reasons we were going. Once scanned and questioned, we were unable to leave the glassed-in area. All around us, there were male Orthodox Jews saying their prayers, covered in prayer shawls, tellefin strapped to their forehead and arm. There were also a few Muslims with prayer beads in their hands and in the midst of that, I sat and read Morning Prayer from the Book of Common Prayer I had in my backpack. Looking back on it, it was a chance for orientation in the midst of all that was happening around me. My Episcopalian and Christian way of praying was my attempt to attach my prayers to the prayers of the Muslims and Jews all around.

 

For the next two weeks disorientation happened at almost every turn: 18 year olds with automatic rifles walking down the boardwalk along the Sea of Galilee, Bedouin families living in desert shanties, mine fields in the Golan Heights, bus loads of Christian pilgrims from around the world,  irrigated orange groves and farms in the midst of a water crisis, three of the world’s religions constantly bumping up against each other, check points and places of great religious significance everywhere we turned.

 

Now, as I finally begin the process of reorientation I am intrigued by the possibilities for my own spiritual journey and for the community I serve as priest and pastor. I’ll keep you posted.

 

Recognizing and Honoring our Grief

Until I sat down to write this latest installment, I forgot that I had written about grief in my last blog post. I was writing about the Faure Requiem liturgy that we hosted this past Sunday evening. Fall is a season of grief for many of us and I think the early Church recognized that reality when All Saints Day, All Souls Day and All Hallows Eve were placed on our calendar of Feast Days. Ancient humans recognized that as well and honored human transitions with feasts and celebrations, many of which were adopted as Christian celebrations.

Last week I heard an interview with Barbara Ehrenreich, the author of Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America. Here's a brief review. I look forward to reading the book. When I remember Sunday evening's liturgy, I juxtapose relentless positive thinking with what I witnessed among the people gathered for beautiful music, prayers and Eucharist. At that special (and I hope annual) liturgy, I witnessed dozens and dozens of people being honest about loss. It was about the death of loved ones, about life transitions, about mortality.

For Christians there is incredible Hope in the Good News of God in Christ, but it is not a story of relentless positive thinking. Scripture generally and the life and ministry of Jesus specifically tell the story of the redeeming work of God in the midst of of real human suffering: death, sickness, poverty, hunger. Our task is to be honest about the realities of our lives and the lives of others and to then search for the ways God is at work in the midst of it. It is work we do together.

A place for grief

As Americans, we have a tendency to create distance between ourselves and the sadness of others and the grief that resides in ourselves. I'm not sure why that is, but I'm aware of the reality of it. The way we distance ourselves from the dying process is a manifestation of what I'm talking about. In fact, the only certainty of living (death) is for Americans turned into a cold and clinical experience and so often happens alone.  

And yet as Christians, the overarching theme of our Story, God's Story, is that "all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well."  As the days get shorter and green things begin to die, we remember again those we love but see no longer and we might feel the pain of our own grief rising up. Consider bringing that pain and sadness to God and to your church community. We'll remember those who have died at our regularly scheduled liturgies on Sunday, November 1.

Consider bringing your own grief to Requiem: Prayers of Rest and Remembrance. It's a special liturgy featuring the music of Faure's Requiem with small orchestra and a choir gathered from Emmanuel and several other congregations. There will be a chance to place a memento of a person or event that you're grieving. We'll gather at Emmanuel, 6pm, on November 1. Invite a friend.

Connecting to our Wider Church

The Episcopal Church is a web of connection: congregations like ours that make up our diocese, that makes up The Episcopal Church, that makes up the worldwide Anglican Communion. And part of our responsibility as members of this interconnected body of Christ is to share our time and talent with the larger whole.

An obvious example of this work is diocesan convention. Eight parishioners will be going down to Vancouver next weekend to pray, talk, sing, socialize and make decisions about ministry in the Diocese of Olympia. Sandy and Emmett Maloof, Peggy and John Way, Mary and Jim Radcliffe, Bruce Lee and Lee Anne Edwards are our delegates this year. they go at their own expense. Please thank them when you see them. Your clergy will be there, as will Jack Barben, who once again this year is responsible for planning music and gathering the musicians who will lead us in worship.

You may not be aware that other parishioners serve the wider church in several ways. Bill Bain and Rick Adams both serve on the Diocesan Board of Directors, Kris Dobbyn serves as chairperson of Episcopal Charities Appeal, Dick Beuthel serves on the board of the Mission to Seafarers, Elizabeth Hardisty on the Bishop's Committee on the Environment, Mariluz Villa-Reynolds on the board of the Episcopal Retirement Communities Foundation and Allan Aflleck and Emmett Maloof are on the Board of Trustees at Church Divinity School of the Pacific, our seminary in Berkeley.

I suspect that there are others at Emmanuel serving the wider Church. If you are one, please let me know. And please know that there are many opportunities to serve and the ministries of the diocese offer a chance to meet other Episcopalians and to be about God's work in the wider community. We will be looking for others from this congregation to serve God through the diocese and the Episcopal Church. Please let me know if something really interests you. And thanks to each person named above who gives of his or her time, talent and treasure in the ministry of serving God through the wider Church.

Also know that your three clergy folk serve the wider church on various boards, commissions and ministry teams. More about that in a future posting.

Blessings, Hunt+

The refining fire of mercy and grace

Arienne's reflection on her sermons and last Sunday's liturgies helped me to see more clearly what is happening at Emmanuel right now. Please feel free to respond on the blog or in an email to her. --Hunt+

 

Today, a day immediately following a celebration the Feast of Saint Jerome at the Wednesday Healing Eucharist, I have some thoughts about Sunday I would like to share. 

 

Jerome is often depicted as one of the four Latin fathers of the Church along with Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo and Pope Gregory I.  Jerome’s story is a colorful one. In his defense of Orthodoxy and work of interpreting the Greek Bible into the vulgar language of Latin (in translations later known as the Vulgate), Jerome angered many.  Our book, Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2003 closes its brief biography of Jerome thusly: “A militant champion of orthodoxy, an indefatigable worker, and a stylist of rare gifts, Jerome was seldom pleasant, but at least he was never dull.” (Lesser Feasts and Fasts 2003, 388) I rarely laugh out loud (the kids today call that LOLing) when I read official Church texts, but I did as I prepared the reflection for Wednesday morning’s liturgy. 

 

The idea of making the Gospel vulgar is nothing new.  Protestants like to point to translation into the vernacular as a Reformation innovation, but Jerome’s life reminds us that the Christian impulse toward re-contextualizing the Gospel into the cultures in which we find ourselves is not unique to Lutheranism, Calvinism, or Anglicanism.  The impulse is part of our genetic blueprint. However ancient this practice, the words from Jerome’s commemoration ring true today.  This process is seldom pleasant (and if you are an optimist, at least it is never dull).

 

I am not a person who was taught to make mistakes gracefully.  There were a lot of expectations and often little grace for me as a child.  One of the most freeing things about my Christian formation has been the realization that I am called to try to realize the Gospel knowing that at times I will fail and be forgiven.  Part of the process of living the Gospel is acting in God’s name then reflecting on the meaning of the action and seeking reconciliation if that is required.

 

I would like those of you who attended either the 8:00 or the 10:30 that I preached very different sermons at each of these liturgies. I believe we at Emmanuel and the church writ large are capable of authentically holding multiple practices together as long as we focus on making each individual liturgy true to its own purpose.  I have for instance many times voiced my opinion on the staff that when we do Rite 1 we should do it well and maintain traditional language and practice.  Some may even be surprised to learn that the language of the Rite 1 Eucharistic Prayers and Confession is among my favorite in the Prayer Book.  I translated the Mission Collect and Prayers of the People responses into Rite 1 language in order to maintain the aesthetic of this liturgy.  My goal for the part I play in all the liturgies is that those in the congregation appointed to lead the liturgy identify what theology and Gospel we hope to enact then do it well. 

 

As preacher, I authored the sermon that was delivered at 10:30.  I received many positive comments about the feel and spirit of last Sunday’s 10:30 liturgy and I have also witnessed the pain some experienced because of my method of preaching.  My own work of reflection involves remaining in an uncomfortable place.  It is a place where I recognized in myself a genuine call to preach in a different manner than is usual.  The place where I stand is one where I must recognize that my action was a symbol for some of their own disenfranchisement, pain and sadness at changes that have taken place in the past few months. 

 

I have found that times when I have experienced disenfranchisement, pain and sadness have been crucial moments in my spiritual formation.  I have wanted to say to those who are hurt some of the words I offered at the “other” sermon on Sunday, from 8:00:

“When I was discerning my call to ordained ministry, a rather disillusioned priest responded to my tears during an early discernment group meeting saying, “you need a thicker skin or they (your parishioners) are going to eat you alive.”  I am glad that I have not followed this advice.  The truth is I would rather hope and on occasion shed a few tears when I disagree with my fellow ministers or one of us falls short.  If any of us shroud our eyes and thicken our skins it only becomes harder to experience the image of God each of us brings to our work.  To do so would rob us of our chance to come closer to Christ’s body.”

When I briefly served as hospital chaplain intern in a Clinical Pastoral Education course, one of the two program heads admonished would-be chaplains to never offer a tissue to someone who was crying in a pastoral encounter. “If they need a tissue,” she said, “they will ask for it or get it for themselves.  When you give someone a tissue you are telling them that you would rather they not be so messy and that is not what you want to say when you are providing pastoral care.”

 

Part of doing ministry is making difficult decisions and being present to their consequences: for good or ill.  The ministry of reconciliation is not only that of priests and bishops who are able to pronounce absolution.  The Book of Common Prayer reminds us that one of the ministries to which the laity is called is “to carry on Christ’s work of reconciliation in the world.” (BCP, 855) This work presupposes the failure of human will. It presupposes we will fall short at times.  Also presupposed is the grace that we can find in being present to those with whom we disagree and those who are in pain. 

 

I hope we can find this grace in one another as we call on God to be with us and bring his Holy Spirit to rest on our community.  I hope we can begin to approach each other in new ways.  I hope we can cast off seeing each other as obstacles to our goals and see instead ourselves as broken and in need of God’s strengthening touch.  I hope we can approach each other not as objects of our persuasion and instead encounter fellow travelers on our long road home.  And finally, I hope you will let me be with you to shed tears over what we have done and what we have left undone.

 

(Prayed as the opening collect each Wednesday morning in our Chapel)

God our healer, whose mercy is like a refining fire: by the loving kindness of Jesus heal us and those for whom we pray; that being renewed by you, we may witness your wholeness to our broken world; through Jesus Christ, in the power of the Spirit. Amen. (Enriching Our Worship II, 28)

Discovering What's Next For Your Ministry

"The vocation for you is the one in which your deep gladness and the world's deep need meet."

--Frederick Buechner, writer and Presbyterian clergyperson.

 

I heard this quotation from Buechner several years ago and it so deepened my understanding of ministry. And not just the ministry of the ordained among us, but for what I sometimes call "the real Christian"--the faithful and dedicated members of the congregation.

 

All of us, of course, are called to ministry. Our baptism is our ordination into Christian ministry and so our lifelong work is to discern how we might best serve God, God's church and God's people. Each of us has unique gifts (deep gladness in Buechner's words) and the world has "deep need."

 

For far too long, church folk volunteer to serve in a ministry and it seems like they are there until we bury them. Or until they finally just drift away. If you are feeling burned out, be open to something new. Walk around the Ministry Fair, talk to your fellow ministers and be open to what the Spirit might be up to in your life. It's okay to drop one piece of work and pick up another.

 

With gratitude for our work together,
Hunt+